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Unbox your Sonoma business

Posted on February 7, 2019 by Jay Rooke

‘One day I was a 29-year-old millionaire, and the next day I was 29.’

By Jay Rooke

Advertising has changed. Forget the slow-motion shots, forget the hired actors. People don’t want to watch a Viagra commercial about your business. They want to see real. They want to meet the staff, see the customers. They want to know what it’s really like to walk through your door.

What do founders of Dollar Shave Club, Rent The Runway, and Warby Parker all have in common? They saw an opportunity to drastically reduce the cost of an overpriced product or service by taking advantage of emerging technologies and trends and applying them to outside-the-box business models that challenge the status quo.

Question: Have you ever been so frustrated with something that you considered quitting your current job to create a better solution?

If the answer is yes, meet Matthew Poole, Sonoma local and founder of 2MINUTE 2ERS (pronounced “two minute tours”), a video production and marketing company that specializes in creating two-minute-long video tours that “unbox” a business, product, or destination. “Video is the future of digital marketing,” says Matthew, “and if you’re not using it regularly to promote your business, you’re already behind the curve.”

Like many entrepreneurs, Matthew – who also owns an online travel agency called LocalGetaways.com – had no intention of launching a new venture, but if necessity is the mother of invention, then frustration is the midwife. After years of asking hotel clients to provide him with video that he could host on his travel site, only to be told over and over that it’s too expensive and time-intensive to shoot, Matthew decided it was time to hack the video marketing industry and launch a new company that creates effective business videos at a fraction of the industry rate.

So why only two minutes long? Because humans have short attention spans. When it comes to viewer engagement, extensive research has revealed that two minutes is the sweet spot. With today’s viewers it’s far better to have multiple shorter videos, especially ones that are related and “suggested” by YouTube as the next video to watch.

However, creating a video about your business is pointless unless you have a long-term strategy to promote that video. Every 2MINUTE 2ER is professionally edited and optimized to reach and maintain the highest possible Google and YouTube search ranking. And Google, which owns YouTube – the world’s second-largest search engine – loves adding YouTube videos on the first page of their search results.

The results of Matthew’s first client video were impressive: within two weeks his 2MINUTE 2ER of the Seattle Lite Brewing Company appeared not only on page one of Google (go ahead – Google it), but also page one/position one on YouTube and 4,300 views on Facebook. “Pretty pictures help sell products and services,” says Matthew, “but pictures can’t show the passion behind that product or service. Only video can do that. We believe that the people making it happen are as important to promote as the product or place.”

Also in the podcast you’ll hear about Matthew’s many adventures as a freelance travel writer, as well as misadventures during his early entrepreneur years, including the dot-com-bomb era. “One day I was a 29-year-old millionaire, and the next day I was 29.”

If you’d like to listen to my podcast with Matthew, go to jayrooke.com. And if you’re interested in learning more about 2MINUTE 2ERS, go to 2minute2ers.com, or email him at [email protected]